Demosclerosis Returns

By

Jonathan Rauch

Updated April 14, 1998 12:01 a.m. ET

Not long ago, at a policy seminar near Washington, I found myself sitting next to a senior aide to one of Congress's self-styled Republican revolutionaries. At the front of the room, a group of graybeards was discussing the reasons the revolution had failed. For it certainly has failed. The fire-eating Republicans of the 104th Congress did pass a landmark welfare reform and cut down agricultural subsidies. Otherwise, the federal government--Commerce Department and all--remains much as it was in 1995, when the Republicans took to the barricades. The Republicans aren't the same, though: Last year they were happy to...